Asus just announced its latest ThunderboltEX 4 Add-on card for any PC builder looking to add Thunderbolt 4 connectivity to your PC. The add-on card can deliver up to 100 watts of power and features two Thunderbolt 4 ports.
The card’s speciality is that it allows for USB-C monitors without connecting a power adapter, while the Thunderbolt 4 ports can also support DisplayPort 1.4 passthrough. The card will give your PC full Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and uses the USB Type-C format. The only catch is that the connected PC needs to use an ASUS motherboard that features a Thunderbolt Readiness header.
The header will provide timing and other low-level system commands to the card. The motherboard will also need to have a USB 2.0 slot, a PCIe 3.0 x 4 host interface, and an extra 6-pin PCIe power input.
That may sound like many requirements, but let’s not forget that this card adds not just one Thunderbolt 4 port but two ports. And these ports support power delivery of up to 100 watts, allowing for a cleaner PC setup. Users can connect three devices and two Thunderbolt monitors or connect four devices and a single Thunderbolt monitor; the choice is yours.
According to sources, each Thunderbolt 4 ports feature 40 GBps of bandwidth, and the card also features two Mini-DisplayPort and comes with Mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cords. The DisplayPort 1.4 passthrough comes with the ability to scale up to a resolution of 8K.
Asus has not yet announced the availability date of the card and the pricing is also unknown as of now. Stay tuned, for more info.
